This is going to be complicated, but it's important. If you aren't up for this right now, get some help. Somebody needs to do these things.

Whether you've not yet seen a psychiatrist or you've already seen several over the course of years you need to keep all your medical records, psychiatric and non-psychiatric, nice and organized for tax purposes.

 

For tax purposes you need to record everything that cost money.           Every doctor's visit, every prescription, your health insurance premiums, even the mileage on your car and anything you've paid in the way of taxis, parking, bridge tolls or public transit to and from the doctor is deductible under current tax law. If you paid a dime towards your health that's been blessed by the AMA, you can deduct it. Sorry, vitamins and supplements don't count, even if your doctor suggested them. Take my advice and invest in some money management software. Back in the days of the first personal computer revolution of the 1970s a big selling point was money management and personal finances. It's actually a very good application. I use Quicken and TurboTax and they have helped me keep my life together when my math skills went down the toilet. Every medical-related transaction is recorded in Quicken, then exported to TurboTax come tax season and I don't have to think about it very much. Quicken's budgeting feature is helping me count down to when I'll have to sell my house to cover my medical expenses. Remember to backup your data regularly in case of any computer problems you might have.  I do a backup after I use either Quicken or TurboTax. Along with any money management software you must get a firewall if you haven't already and you must make sure the firewall is running whenever you are connected to the Internet. The downside to money management software is that you're keeping sensitive information on a computer that is vulnerable to snooping by strangers. I use McAfee's Firewall. Even if you don't use any money management software a firewall is a good idea. Save all of your medical receipts in a folder for each year. When you get a prescription you get a special receipt for it for tax purposes. Some HMOs don't always have the drug name on the receipt, so you'll have to write it down yourself. That's not necessary for tax purposes, but it is a good idea. Why? Your tax receipts are a backup for the medical history you keep for your doctors. It also makes things a lot clearer if worse comes to worse and you're ever audited. At tax time you or your tax preparer can just add up all the receipts from that folder if you didn't have some money management software do it for you. Never throw the receipts away! After your taxes are done you'll want to save them as documentation in case of an audit (unlikely, but possible) and as a backup medical history. I'm the sort of geek who needs a couple of locking filing cabinets because I believe in keeping documentation and keeping it safe. For most people you can get cardboard boxes where you can hang file folders from office supply companies. One of those, along with the hanging folders should do it. You really should keep the supporting documentation for your tax records for seven years. But you should keep the supporting documentation for your medical records forever.

 

Hey, did you find this page all by itself through Google or some other search engine? Great! But to really appreciate the entire site, you need to start here.